Thoughts About Wikileaks and Egoleaks

Now that the serial pest Julian Assange has finally been arrested, it might be worth looking at him and his Wikileaks scandal a bit more closely. The immediate reason for his arrest is a rape charge, which is serious enough. But if he were in the military, he could also be up on charges of high treason, and putting the nation(s) at risk.

But hey, at least he’s getting his 15 minutes of fame out of all this. He seems to be big on ego as he seeks to take the high moral ground here. But you have to wonder whether there is any good at all to his cause, when all the usual suspects of the radical left are leaping to his defence.

Australian-born Assange thinks he is being oh so very important and clever in splashing around all these classified documents and pieces of information – many of which are vital for national security. These leaks are putting the lives of countless people at risk all around the world.

Yet the lefties think he is a new messiah, a new martyr. Yeah right. Just try this little thought experiment. Suppose I snuck into one of these lefties’ homes, and secretly recorded all the conversations and goings on taking place there. You know, all the remarks made which would never be made if these guys were in public.

Or the many arguments, tantrums, blow-ups and dust-ups that can so often occur in any home. It is one thing to be in a family where this stuff regularly occurs, but it is quite another matter when personal household secrets are splashed to the entire world. Most of these lefties would cry foul if this happened to them.

They would be screaming “invasion of privacy” and “how dare you deny me my rights”. But when it comes to exposing some inside info on America, or other nations, then all of a sudden it is fair game. No matter what the cost might be.

Rich Galen had a terrific article on all this recently and is well worth quoting from: “Assange is not a digital Robin Hood. He is a hacker, a thug, and an accused rapist. That last is a charge leveled, not by the U.S. Department of State, but by Sweden which has a pretty liberal view of such things, so if they have asked INTERPOL to help hunt Assange down to answer a rape charge it may well be legit.

“Here’s the thing about what Assange is doing: He has decided that he, among the 6.7 billion humans on the Earth, is solely qualified to decide what should be held secret and what should be made public. News outlets worldwide have taken to describing Wikileaks as a ‘whistleblower website.’ That’s like saying the Central and South American cocaine drug cartels are “entertainment entrepreneurs.”

“Anyone who has ever held any security clearance knows there are documents which are classified which have no reason to be, other than someone had the authority to have it classified, and so they did. Anyone who has had a very high security clearance (of whom I am not one) has seen documents which appear to have been classified at that very high level only to avoid any potential embarrassment to the writer.

“Nevertheless, I have never run into any person who had access to anything classified higher than the instruction booklet to the office coffee-maker who thought they had the right – much less an obligation – to decide what should be classified and what should be in the public domain.

“Forget about secret government cables covering sweeping international events. Go back through your emails from the past 30 days. Do you want some misfit from Sweden deciding which of them should be sent to the Washington Post, your employer, or your spouse, and which should not? Sweden? How about Toby Flenderson from H.R. making that decision? I didn’t think so.”

Quite right. If we expect and demand privacy for our own lives, why cannot governments demand the same right? Sure, there is a place for objective reporting of the news. And no government is above scrutiny. But governments do have the right to keep certain bits of information secret, especially if the publicising of them will put people or nations at risk.

Galen concludes his piece this way: “Assange is blackmailing the world to allow him to continue to play his part in this international game of Russian roulette. Like every megalomaniac from Napoleon to Lex Luthar he believes only he knows the path to truth.

“The international community has determined that communications between diplomatic outposts and their home governments are inviolate. Diplomatic pouches – as arcane as that term has become in the age of the internet – are not to be inspected, challenged, or opened by security, customs or immigration personnel at any border in the world. Embassies themselves are considered the soil of the country the Ambassador within represents. You walk into the Saudi Arabian Embassy next to the Kennedy Center in Washington and you are IN Saudi Arabia.

“I understand that the spy services of those very same countries are doing everything in their power to discover what those very same foreign diplomats are saying to their masters at home, but that’s the way this complex international waltz is danced. Agree or not, that’s the way the system has evolved. It is not for Julian Assange to decide, not just that the system is flawed, but that he has the right to put thousands of people at risk of physical harm because he doesn’t like it.”

Queensland letter writer Frank Bellet put it this way: “Apparently the scoffers at the importance and dangers of the Wikileaks documents are not aware that there is war on – different from WW2 but a war never the less. It was declared in New York years ago on the 11th September, just as the Pacific war was declared years before on the 7th December at Pearl Harbour.

“Could you imagine during WW2 some army private and his accomplices, for example, leaking information about that smart plan by the British, who tricked the Nazis as to where they intended to invade Europe to end the war.

“The authorities took possession of the body of a Welsh alcoholic, who died from pneumonia, contrary to how it was depicted in the movie ‘The Man Who Never Was’. They dropped it from a submarine, near the Spanish coast, with a set of false papers in a briefcase attached to his wrist with ‘details’ of the invasion. They were certain it would fall into the hands of the enemy. They also included papers suggesting he was a Catholic in the belief that the Spaniards would ensure he had a religious burial.

“If the newspapers had wind of that plot, there is no way they would have made headlines of the story, on the basis of the public’s right to know, nor would they have provided one of the leakers with an article defending himself. I have always been of the opinion that all is not fair in love, but it is fair in war.”

Like it or not, there can be times when keeping secrets is a very important matter – especially when the exposure of such secrets will put the lives of many at risk. So my humble opinion is this: let the bum rot in jail for a couple of years. That might help to cool his megalomaniac heels a bit.

Hey I am with you 100 per cent. But there are plenty of folks – even Christians – who want to turn him into a hero and martyr, just like Ned Kelly and David Hicks! No wonder we are in such a mess.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Mishka Gora
8.12.10 /
3pm

I think it’s unfortunate Assange isn’t being treated as the despicable traitor he so clearly is. The public have no respect for authority, and the authorities are too weak and afraid to exert their power. In a moral world, Assange would be charged with treason, but we live in a corrupt world, so Assange instead finds himself the victim of dubious accusations by arch-feminists in Sweden. Poetic justic, but not good enough methinks!
Mishka Gora

Deryn J Plathey
8.12.10 /
3pm

Thank you Mr Muehlenberg
While I don’t always agree with your posts, I found this one most useful.

Good write up and I will cross post to my site tomorrow, as today is just the post honoring those who gave their all at Pearl Harbor and to those who survived.

This despicable person is a traitor and back stabbing evil man. He deserves to be tried for treason and every other crime he can be tried for. He is the darling of those who hate the USA, the West and all we stand for and have died for. He deserves to not see the light of day ever again, at the very least.

Rick Lakehomer, USA

david skinner
8.12.10 /
4pm

Assange is a self-confessed anarchist. But why is it that the person who is really at the centre of this, Bradley Manning, a homosexual who has a grudge against the army because of its DADT (Don’t ask don’t tell policy) and who is enraged with Prop 8, is not centre stage?

Clearly it is the left wing media who are using Assange and the rape case in Sweden as a distraction for the real motivation behind the leaks. The Guardian in the UK, confirms this view when it actually justifies and applauds what Manning did.

I can see the good side of what Wikileaks could do, but there were already sites on the internet that did the same job without the media hype that wikileaks enjoys.

An interesting point is there are rumours that Assange is funding his life through selling leaked documents to other countries without the “scrubbing” of sensitive data or providing them to other governments before public release.

Hang on a minute… Haven’t some of the leaks exposed Kevin Rudd/Clinton assessments????

And they’ve exposed left wing Osama’s Gov’t too haven’t they???

Now I’m becoming very confused buy the “only pro-left leaks” stance or have I missed something?

Paul Evans

david skinner
8.12.10 /
6pm

The Herrick report describes how Bolsheviks or more strictly speaking anarchists rehearsed what both Assange and Manning stand for today – that is until Stalin put a stop to it.

“In analyzing Marxism, historian Arnold Toynbee revealed that it is a distinctly ‘religious’ secular humanist inspiration whose God is the Goddess of Historical Necessity. Marxism, states Toynbee, “is the apocalyptic vision of a violent revolution which is inevitable because it is the decree … of (the Goddess), and which is to invert the present roles of Proletariat and Dominant Majority … in a reversal of roles which is to carry the Chosen People … from the lowest to the highest place in the Kingdom of this World.” (A Study of History) In other words, the Christian culture was to be turned upside-down and the chosen ones – the proletariat and their subculture – placed into positions of dominance. The new Kingdom was to be matrist and polymorphously perverse. In the pre-Stalinist Soviet Union, Bolshevik religious fanatics – believing they were “scientific high-priests” endowed with “God-like” creative powers – literally attempted to scientifically re-engineer not only a New Man but a polymorphously perverse Kingdom of this World where androgynous beings could move fluidly into and out of sexually-gratifying relationships. Before they could begin this monstrously inhuman project, Marxists first had to deconstruct both man and his existing culture.”

Hey, don’t get me wrong – I enjoy some of these revelations as much as the next guy. Intriguing to see how some regard Rudd as a buffoon, and how the US put pressure on other nations to hop on the global warming bandwagon, and so on. But the whole drift and tenor of his actions seems to be to undermine America and the West. He is a lefty, and proud to be part of the leftist cause.

Hi Ho all and one in the Christian faith; I think many here and on the conservative side are missing the point; God has used donkeys & false prophets( Balaam) to get TRUTH out. It isn’t just the conservative side Assange is targeting and I know he is darling of the Left – but he has revealed how countries have tried to blackmail the USA into getting aboard the Copehhagen accord, his leaks have shown how divided the middle east is and how Muslim nations hate one another, not just the Jews and for me a big one, the leaks have revealed that China does not really care if North Korea is unified with the South. That is comforting, no imminent threat of WW3! To show you,that I am not a lone conservative voice, here is a quote from the conservative American Thinker; “Hillary Clinton spoke for them all when she said that WikiLeaks disclosures are “not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests, [but] an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.”

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Assange’s act is not an attack on the peoples of the world. Quite to the contrary, it is an attack on a very narrow group of people. It is an attack on the world’s governing elites, because it shows them for what they truly are: liars, hypocrites, schemers, incompetents, egomaniacs, thieves, and murderers.

There are two extreme and unbiblical views of government that Christians should avoid. One is the anarchistic, rebellious position of someone like Assange and his many devotees. Romans 13 clearly tells us about our responsibility to government and authority. The other extreme is of course statism, where the state is seen as perfect, unassailable, and answerable to no one. There is certainly a place for asking hard questions, and demanding reasonable levels of accountability from our leaders. But what we have here is something quite different, and I fail to see how this is the right way to go about this.

The fact that he is still alive shows that the anti-government extremists (of both sides of politics) are not getting it. It is only in the free and democratic West that someone like Assange can get away with all this, and even be treated as some sort of hero and martyr. He would have been dead a long time ago if he tried to pull this stunt in a place like North Korea or Iran – now those are real dictatorships. So I don’t buy this foolish conspiracy theory and moral equivalence that Western governments are totally corrupt and completely morally bankrupt. Such views seem to indicate political and historical naivety, and also reveal a faulty understanding of the biblical view of government.

But if Assage supporters want to put me to the wall over this, then so be it. My fear is soon his groupies will be depicting him as hanging on a cross. Sorry, but in my books he is on the same level as a David Hicks, and deserves no better treatment.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

John Snowden
8.12.10 /
10pm

Assange has blown a gigantic whistle on the USA because he sees it as a threat to others. But where does this principle stop? If he ends up in prison, why shouldn’t hackers break into the prison computer system and divulge the contents of all confidential files for all the world to see? After all, he and the inmates would be there because they are a threat to others.

Is there an ethics of whistleblowing?

John Snowden

Chris
9.12.10 /
8am

This is an interesting idea “Is there an ethics of whistleblowing?”.
Chris Dixon

Bill, I agree with your sentiments on Government’s – the 2 extremes, anarchism or staism; but you have revealed a hole in your argument; he can only live in the free and democratic west – this same free & democratic west that is now so immoral that a Churchill & Kennedy would not recognize it and it is in free fall of moral relativism and multi-divisions that MAY destroy the west ( an even chance that it will) – I can see that he is a hero/martyr to extreme leftists – but what he divulging is hurting the left also. I personally cannot wait until he reveals stuff he has on the ‘too big to fail’ banks – the self same banks/corporations that nearly fiscally destroyed the USA and the West – remember God used Pharoah as well to achieve His purposes. God Bless.
Neil Innes, NT

But in your rush to judgment, you are confusing two quite different things. A form of government which while good in keeping power in check (as in a democracy) can be abused and misused, of course. But that is fundamentally different from a form of government which is inherently evil and morally defective, as a police state. One can be corrupted, the other is intrinsically corrupted. By wanting to opt for a faulty moral equivalence here, you undermine all government, and God’s ordaining of government. Free and accountable Western government can be fixed up, and can even allow people like Assange to do their thing. Genuinely evil governments do not. You simply throw the baby out with the bath water here.

As we are well aware history always repeats – the Roman Empire fell, the Greeks, the British Empire, the Soviet empire e.t.c. by it’s very nature, a democracy can & will destroy itself…….unless, as you have stated;’ Free and accountable Western government can be fixed up, and can even allow people like Assange to do their thing.’ This is my point…….Assange in his extreme leftism & anarchy is keeping the system of democracy honest and accountable, both sides of politics. As far as a state being overtly or inherently evil, I do hear you…..democracy is best at keeping a brutally repressive police state at bay; BUT, as Christianity has declined in the West……so has the moral decline been accelerated and will continue too gather pace, as you have shown……is Assange doing more harm than good? Time will tell, but scripture does tell us that our & all evils deeds will be brought to His light, either in this world or the one to come and if it takes a white haired, immoral donkey from Australia – so be it.
Neil Innes, NT

Paul Martin
9.12.10 /
11am

From what I’ve seen, Wikileaks does not infringe personal privacy, nor does it reveal confidential corporate information. Its mission seems to be to shine light on government activities.

Government is supposed to represent the people, but we all know that politicians routinely lie to us and employ armies of spin doctors to massage the truth. Its high time the people were better informed about what really goes on. The mainstream media does a pretty lousy job at keeping governments honest.

What has surprised me is how mundane many of the so-called confidential cables really are. No wonder the US is embarrassed. Their highly-paid diplomats are revealed as little better than the cocktail-party gossip-mongers we always suspected diplomats were.

The US always portrays itself as a protector of freedom, and in particular freedom of speech, so it’s ironic that many US leaders want to silence Wikileaks. A further irony is that the US increased information sharing between agencies in response to revelations that poor communication was a key factor in failing to stop the 9/11 terrorists. This more open communication policy has come back to bite them, but it would be a tragedy if they closed ranks again.

On balance, I believe the world would be better off if governments weren’t so obsessed about secrecy and spin.

But again, issues are being confused. The final judgment will expose every secret and judge every thought and deed. But that has nothing to do with governments having the legitimate right to keep some things from being splashed all around in public, especially if doing so will unnecessarily put lives at risk. There is a place for secrecy – both personal and governmental. I have already mentioned in my article examples of this in history, and especially in wartime, when keeping some information confidential is essential to overcoming a ruthless enemy and preserving freedom.

All this is of course not to say that America or any other country is perfect, that no accountability and openness is necessary, and that there is no place for investigative journalism, and so on. As always we need to seek the biblical and political balance here. But all I seem to see here is an egomaniac and anarchist who does not seem to give a rip about how much damage he is causing.

And I have been interested to see so much celebration of rebellion on the part of some Christians. I may need to write a whole article on this. Rebellion never gets a good rap in Scripture. It is as the sin of witchcraft, we are told. The first rebel was Satan (as radical Saul Alinsky reminds us), and rebellion is the very essence of sin. Yet we have some Christians (not you) holding this rebel up as some sort of hero and messianic figure, a martyr, another Ned Kelly, and so on. Sorry, but it is God who has ordained both government and authority, and I see far too much unbiblical hatred of both by some believers (again, not you).

But at the end of the day, I will not go to the wall over this. I will for the gospel of Christ however. But on this issue, we may just have to agree to disagree. But I do think the biblical understanding of government is not very well grasped by many believers today, at least as seen in discussions about this issue. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.

The Taliban has already put together an extensive hit list based on names handed to them via Wikileaks. Other examples of real lives being put at risk can be mentioned. But it is not necessary for me to keep repeating myself here. I have sought to make my case (in response to people asking what I think about all this) in my article and comments. So as I keep saying, we may just have to agree to disagree here.

Hey Bill, this post has been very helpful.
Cheers and many thanks,
Paul Evans

Jerome Gonzalez
9.12.10 /
12pm

Surely if Assange’s crime is to have made public the various Governments’ secrets, then the Media is just as guilty, since all they do is spread his disclosures even further. If he is to be prosecuted for this, then why not prosecute the Media too?
Jerome Gonzalez

I am hearing you Bill; I suppose at present we do have the best governance in the world and we are to obey our authorities (where biblical) and any system whereby a few powerful elite hold sway is scary e.g. China. I am dubious of a bright western world future and I know that I sound conspiratorial, when Prof.Carroll Quigley of Georgetown, who taught Bill Clinton said; ‘The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.’ (Broke -Glenn Beck) To me Assange is like a lance on the boil of those arrogant elite, those few who have sought to control and dominate the masses, they cant get away with it. I do understand that he has or has the potential to harm real people – but I would suggest that those ‘faceless elite’ – the uber wealthy & those with political power need to be kept in check. But as you say, we will have to agree to disagree on Assange.
Neil Innes, NT

“In the fanatically puritanical view of WikiLeaks, no one and no organization should have anything to hide. It is scarcely worth arguing against such a childish view of life. The actual effect of WikiLeaks is likely to be profound and precisely the opposite of what it supposedly sets out to achieve. Far from making for a more open world, it could make for a much more closed one.” www.city-journal.org/2010/eon1202td.html

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Jeffrey Carl
9.12.10 /
1pm

I do have concerns as to the outcome of this issue though, in particular with the idea of Net Neutrality. This issue may give the impetus to the US to find a way of shutting down websites in the name of national security, whether its is hosted in there territory or not.
Its not to far of a stretch to see such sites as yours, Bill, might come under some knee jerk regulation thereby needing to be pulled from the net.
I watch the outcome of this with bated breath. Wiki-leaks may have caused the US some great embarrassment, but they may have give the US a bigger stick as well.
Maybe the US should take stock of the situation and get some perspective, cause maybe next time someone has a beef with them it wont be cables that get leaked.

I read the above by Theodore Dalrymple and I see his point. In fact I think that in future it will be much harder to communicate at State levels and corporations and I can see that it would be easier to impose censorship on those deemed to be unlawfull or inappropriate e.g. right wing christian fundamentalists or they that support Israel. I am not sure that it is as bad as Dalrymple makes out though, as these are elected officials of the people, for the people – not a private conversation between friends.
Neil Innes, NT

Bill
you’ve done some good work above with responses to the many misconceptions emerging from some of the participants in the debate. You must be about out of breath. I wish to comment on two remarks from Neil Innes. He spoke about how Assange criticized some Muslim nations, as if that gave his behaviour some credence of balance. Criticism of any secret rapport the US had with some Muslim countries would do considerable harm to America, which is what Assange’s behaviour is all about.
His other comment that the West is so morally corrupt Churchill and Kennedy wouldn’t recognise it. First of all, following the Second World War, there was some controversy over what Churchill should have or should not have done, when the British discovered that the Luftwaffe (the German word for Airforce) was about to bomb the British city of Coventry to smitherines. He decided to keep it a secret, allowing many thousands of British civilians to die, rather than reveal by warning the population, that the British had broken the German code. He also would have been aware of the British Airforce plan to bomb and burn the German city of Desden to the ground, when, in fact, it wasn’t a military target but was full of women and children refugees. As for John Kennedy being morally outraged, he pretended to have a win over Soviet leader Khrushchev with the Cuban missile crisis, when he had in fact made a secret deal with Kruschev for the communist to take the Soviet missiles (which were aimed at America) out of Cuba, provided the Soviets waited six months and then he would take the US defence missiles out of Turkey – all very secretive at the time but Kennedy believed the public had no right to know.
Frank Bellet, Petrie Qld

Frank – my point is that the ‘morals’ of today would have shocked Churchill & Kennedy; I’m talking loose sexual morals here. Frank unless you or I have to face the grave consequences of making life and death decisions in regards to information released – then I think you are judging a bit too harshly. See a few thousand killed to save 100’s of thousands? These are decisions that are critiqued by people (me too) who will NEVER have to make those type of decisions. Kennedy probably wasn’t the best example of a person who would be shocked about loose sexual standards, as he misbehaved in private – but I’m quite sure he still would have been shocked. I for one am comforted that the Islam middle east nations fear one another and hate each other, as it means, at present they will not gang up against Israel.
Neil Innes, NT

Lex Clarke
9.12.10 /
9pm

Hi Bill. I sometimes wonder, with things like this, “what is really happening”. Sometimes things are not what they appear. Is this a simple “battle against flesh & blood” or is there some “spiritual wickedness in high places” going on that we cannot see?
Lex Clarke, SA

david skinner
10.12.10 /
2am

There is a big difference between revealing the truth and revealing facts. The facts that Assange reveals are selective, designed to bring down all and any authority, leaving him free to behave however he wishes, no matter what this costs to lives that will be put at risk as a consequence of his actions. As you say Bill, one day all books will be opened where every thought and deed will be open for judgement. But Assange is not qualified to be this judge. Hopefully he will not mind the facts being revealed, for all to see about his sex life, in the Swedish courts.

I am reluctant to comment on this as I am definitely not fully informed on the whole matter – I only have a basic understanding of what wikileaks is, or was trying to be, and what the motives were behind it.

I’m really not sure if Assange is a good or a bad man, but he should definitely receive the consequences that his actions may bring.

I do want to comment on perhaps why many may be seeing this as a less serious case than what it is. I know many my age are struggling to see it as a negative concept, that being the idea of giving the public the information that is otherwise being kept hidden from them. You have to understand that for those in their 20’s and younger, it is almost a forgotten that the internet hasn’t always been around. Information is accessable at the press of a button, and now anybody anywhere could potentially become an expert on any given topic overnight. We are in information overload and believe that everything should be accessible at any time. I think that maybe this is just one of the reasons that this might be difficult for some to see this is a crime like any other.

“There is a far more sinister aspect to what Julian Assange and his co-conspirators are doing to our troops. Last year, WikiLeaks posted classified information about U.S. technology used to protect against deadly improvised explosive devices – the No. 1 cause of death and injury to American and coalition personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. When confronted about the disclosure by a reporter from The New Yorker, Assange, who claims to be engaged in ‘scientific journalism,’ acknowledged he and his colleagues might get blood on their hands.

“More recently, WikiLeaks disseminated the names and Social Security numbers of military personnel, some of whom are deployed overseas. Thanks to Assange, cyberthieves – from common-criminal hackers to terrorists – can access private information about vulnerable American troops.”

“All you need to know about Assange is contained in the profile of him by the great John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya, and in his shockingly thuggish response to it. The man is plainly a micro-megalomaniac with few if any scruples and an undisguised agenda. As I wrote before, when he says his aim is ‘to end two wars’, one knows at once what he means by the ‘ending’. In his fantasies he is probably some kind of guerilla warrior, but in the real world he is a middleman and peddler who resents the civilisation that nurtured him.”

“PFC Manning downloaded a few bucketfuls of documents that told many secrets of our operations against the terrorists. Once sold they were put on display by Julian Assange of Wikileaks and now those who seek to murder Americans in cold blood have reams of information they did not previously have. There has never been a clearer act of treason in American history.”

It is the reality of sin and evil which has created the need for secrets, legitimate secrets I mean, just like it made the covering of the human body necessary. If Julian says there is no need or no place for secrecy anywhere, he has denied the reality of sinful human nature, which is not surprising, seeing he is not a Christian, no matter what else he might be.
Many blessings
Ursula Bennett